Politics|Spicer Argues That More Public Disclosure Is Unnecessary, Even Harmful

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Spicer Argues That More Public Disclosure Is Unnecessary, Even Harmful

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Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a news conference on Monday after a weekend of demonstrations over President Trump’s longstanding refusal to release his tax returns.CreditCreditAl Drago/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — White House officials on Monday mustered a sweeping defense of their less-is-more public disclosure practices, arguing that releasing information on a wide array of topics would strike a blow against personal privacy and impede President Trump’s ability to govern.

This stance, critics say, represents a shift from Mr. Trump’s own drain-the-swamp campaign message and his promise to decrease the influence of lobbyists, special interest groups and big political donors.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, facing a barrage of questions about the president’s commitment to transparency, repeatedly shut down reporters’ queries — from the identity of Mr. Trump’s weekend golf partners to his refusal to release his 2016 tax returns. Mr. Spicer said that greater public disclosure was unnecessary, intrusive or even harmful.

He defended Mr. Trump’s reversal of President Barack Obama’s practice of periodically releasing West Wing visitor logs, and suggested that doing so would discourage outsiders who require anonymity to offer frank advice to the president and his top advisers.

“I think that we recognize that there’s a privacy aspect to allowing citizens to come, express their views,” Mr. Spicer told reporters. He added that an earlier practice of exempting national security officials from the logs made Mr. Obama’s release of visitor names a “faux” transparency.

“We are going to follow the law the way that every administration has followed up until the last one,” he said.

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, conceded that Mr. Obama’s practice was “less than perfect.” But he said Mr. Trump’s refusal to release any of the logs represented a “major step backward” for presidential transparency.

“Sometimes I think the president doesn’t understand the line between being a private businessman and serving the public trust, and he thinks he can just run his life the same way he’s done for 50 years,” Mr. Cummings said.

“But this is about the public trust. If you want to get rich, don’t get into politics. I know that. If you want privacy, don’t go into politics. He needs to learn that.”

Mr. Spicer spoke after a weekend of demonstrations over Mr. Trump’s longstanding refusal to release his tax returns. He said that voters elected the president with full knowledge that he was breaking decades of precedent by refusing to release his taxes. Mr. Spicer also repeated the president’s argument that continuing, routine audits of his taxes prevented them from being made public.

“I think the people understand, you know, how successful the president has been and how much he’s paid in taxes,” Mr. Spicer said.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly said he would release his taxes once the audits were completed, but since has backed off that pledge. A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll last week found that Americans believed, by a 53 to 32 percent margin, that Mr. Trump should be required to release his returns.

When a reporter asked Mr. Spicer on Monday if the president ever intended to release the information, he deadpanned, “We’ll have to get back to you on that.”

Later, a deputy for Mr. Spicer emailed that all presidents undergo automatic I.R.S. audits, meaning that Mr. Trump now has a blanket rationale for never releasing the returns if he chooses to maintain his current course.

“He is not interested in public disclosure. That’s why he’s the first president in modern history, since Nixon, to hide his taxes,” said Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a frequent Trump critic.

“The American people voted for him to be president; they didn’t vote for him to come into this office with a whole bunch of conflicts of interest, they didn’t elect him to do whatever he wanted,” Mr. Painter added.

When Julie Pace, a reporter for The Associated Press who serves on the board of the White House Correspondents Association, complained about the scarcity of information about the president’s activities at his Florida vacation resort, Mr. Spicer responded by saying the White House was doing a “fairly good job” of keeping journalists in the loop.

“Obviously, the president has, you know, time to spend with family,” he said. “He makes phone calls. We generally provide readouts of those phone calls with foreign leaders, whether he’s here or in Florida.”

Then another reporter asked Mr. Spicer if it was fair to say, “this is the least transparent administration in decades.”

He responded by pointing to the “pool sprays” — where a small group of reporters and photographers are briefly allowed to interact with the president and attendees of White House meetings before being ushered out.

“I think that we’ve taken several steps to allow people’s access to this White House,” Mr. Spicer said. “We hold regular pool sprays, we bring people in, we release participant lists, we give press the opportunity to come into the room, see everybody who’s there, hear part of the discussion.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: In Shift, White House Says More Public Disclosure Is Unnecessary or Even Harmful. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe